Reflecting on a rich collaboration, The Bentway’s Co-Executive Director Ilana Altman spoke with Julia D. Day (Partner and Director, Gehl New York) and Dr. Kate Mulligan (Founder and Scientific Director of the Canadian Institute for Social Prescribing; Associate Professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health) to chat about our shared research into the power of public space.
Ilana (IA): You each bring a unique and important lens to this work. What motivated each of you to partake in this research, and what inspired the development of Rx for Social Connection?
Kate (KM): As a health geographer, I’ve seen how deeply our health and wellbeing are shaped by relationships – with other people, with place and nature, with arts and culture, and with ourselves. Collaborating with The Bentway and Gehl gave our team the chance to learn more about public spaces as essential health infrastructure, not just amenities. When healthcare and public space folks join forces like this, we can unlock new ways of thinking, doing and being, to build stronger and more connected communities. It can help us advocate for things like paired investment, for example, where for every government or private sector investment in economic or physical infrastructure, we can require a paired investment in social infrastructure for community health.
Julia (JD): Public space is a key ingredient in the inclusive, joyful city making recipe. The Gehl team is always looking for opportunities to form interdisciplinary partnerships and gather evidence that highlights the power of public space in addressing our physical or mental health, economic opportunity, or safety. While Gehl has led several assessments to document impacts of public space on access to play or sense of belonging, we had not done so in partnership with a school of public health. This presented a unique opportunity to tell a more compelling story about the power of place on our health. We are grateful to have been involved with this fabulous team.
IA: Kate, your team led the Public Health Survey, engaging visitors to better understand how The Bentway’s spaces and programs affected their sense of wellbeing and connection. What stood out to you most in the responses from community members?
KM: Self-reported health measures are gaining traction as vital indicators of how we’re doing; we learn a lot when we simply ask people what’s important to them, and really listen to – and act on – what they value. What stood out from this survey was how simple people’s needs are: many said just being at The Bentway made them feel less alone, that comfortable seating and accessible paths helped people connect and feel at ease, that volunteering gave them a sense of purpose and contribution. It’s a reminder that simple, thoughtful designs and programs can go a long way toward welcoming people and showing that they matter and belong in public spaces.
IA: As a public health researcher, how has your thinking about public space changed in recent years? How does it factor into your suite of tools and supports?
KM: What’s changed for me is the sense of shared readiness for collaboration and action. We’ve got the evidence in hand, and it’s becoming more mainstream to recognize social infrastructure – community places, people and programs – as critical health assets rather than background features of life. The World Health Organization has a new report on loneliness and social connectedness that powerfully reinforces this message: we need to invest not only in individual fixes and broad public policies, but local communities and the public spaces where health promotion, prevention, and community-building happen.
IA: And Julia, your team led the Public Life Observation Study, analyzing visitor movements and activities on site. Were there any findings from this work that were unexpected or surprised you?
JD: The findings affirmed the importance of the most standard of urban design features, such as human scale lighting, greenery, and seating. Yet what stood out for us was that the research also illustrated how important these physical qualities are to our sense of connection and belonging. For example, for more than half of the respondents reported that landscape features like grass, trees, and plants increased their sense of belonging and connection to the place. Over 70% said that public seating enhanced their meaningful interactions. Seating, understood among designers as a key feature of physical comfort, is also important for mental health.
Another was the importance of both hard and soft infrastructure in making a place inviting. Yes, we need quality in the physical design of a place, but we also need reasons to visit a place – we need invitations and culturally sensitive programs that draw us out of our homes or away from screens and making connecting and lingering feel easy, safe and fun. We need great places to be and great people to help program, steward, and operate those spaces.
IA: How can other organizations working in the public realm use this research to shape future programming or public space design and better serve the needs of their communities?
JD: Each community is unique and requires its own set of interventions. That said, there are overarching lessons others can build on related to an approach to planning and programming.
- Focus on human experience in the place. What does it feel like to walk around and spend time there? Is it comfortable for you or for people with different mobility or neurological needs? Spend time to understand the experience firsthand and how designs and programs can respond to this.
- Form cross sector partnerships. Partner with public health researchers or agencies to unearth stories and evidence that helps make the case for public space as part of the community health toolbox.
- Develop policies that position social connection as a core goal and desired outcome of investments in place design and development. These can be used to guide the development of design briefs, planning or development.
City design and planning needs this interdisciplinary partnership. We need practitioners to talk to each other.
IA: Finally, what’s next? Are there ways each of you hope to expand or build on this work in future projects or cities?
KM: Big geopolitical and biophysical changes are coming at all of us. I continue to grow the work of the Canadian Institute for Social Prescribing, to help innovators build local resilience through health-linked social infrastructure and share knowledge across the country. I’m also spending the next year as the Commonwealth Fund’s Canadian Harkness Fellow in Healthcare Policy and Practice, joining fellows from all over the world to keep learning about and forging the local-scale community connections that are so vital for our health and resilience and wellbeing.
JD: Can investing in public spaces save democracy? I hope so! Public spaces – places to connect with one another, to bond or to forge bridging connections across difference are more important than ever. Many systemic forces are negatively impacting civic trust, polarization and investment in the public sector. As designers and planners, we can set the stage for people to have great, inclusive experiences that remind us first-hand about our shared humanity.
One way we’re expanding on this work is through a partnership with NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge. We’re asking how cities can create and sustain social infrastructure — the network of physical spaces that shape our capacity to interact? In three communities across New York, we’re assessing how design, program, funding, and maintenance, as well as community context, influences opportunities to generate connection across difference. The findings will inform site / community-level recommendations, as well as municipal, state, and/or federal policy recommendations.
